Saturday, April 25, 2009

Put That Paint Roller Down and Back Away, or How Nine Rolls of Blue Tape Nearly Ruined My Marriage

We are moving soon. The packers have come and gone, taking with them all my efforts in organizing, cleaning and labeling, I say good riddance. I don't need half that stuff anyway. But, once the dust had cleared and pizza boxes had been hidden away, the real work began. My husband thought it might be a novel, and yes gallant, move to take a day off work and help me paint, can you hear my TMJ creaking? He started this project, like every project he starts, at seven a.m.-which is silly because nothing opens here until nine- then the by way over shopping; seven hundred feet of black plastic to cover the ten by ten room my daughter calls home, nine rolls of blue painters tape, I'll be using that for Christmas wrapping this year, four cans of paint, and we were set. Let's go. Half the day is gone, so let's get this thing going. The plastic had to be cut down, while my husband spent forty-five minutes looking for his "all-purpose tool" I found mine (a borrowed steak knife) and hacked that baby up. By the time he returned I had it taped down and I was shaking paint. He sighed very loudly and taped it down some more. Then he took the paint I'd been shaking for five minutes, shook it some more and poured the exact correct amount into the paint pan, it takes a practiced eye to perform this maneuver, evidently. He pulled a stool up to a wall, climbed up and proceeded to dictate his orders like a surgeon doing complicated and life saving work, first for tape (you can never use too much tape) then for roller, properly saturated, then for a paint brush for those tight places. Are you getting a migraine too? I was permitted to brush along the bottom and sides, so that he could roller in the middle, I was also given the very important chore of baseboards and window frames. I envisioned tipping him off that stool, rolling him up in that football field of black plastic and using a couple of rolls of nice blue painter's tape to seal him in, for freshness of course. I'd have had to roll him out to the curb, he'd make too much noise to stay in the house, but trash pick-up isn't until Monday, and surely he'd free himself by then. He has had survival training, after all, they had to have covered freeing yourself painting supplies at some point.

2 comments:

ScrappyTams said...

Oooohhh! how I missed you. So glad you are back. Painting? Before a move!!! Why???

Rowena said...

You have my complete sympathy, empathy, and all the other pathies, too. And people wonder why it takes us so long to get something done ...